Oshawa’s Eileen Richards a champion through and through

Dominated Canadian, U.S. speed skating in the 1940s

Eileen (Whalley) Richards

Jason Liebregts / Metroland

OSHAWA -- Eileen (Whalley) Richards, 91, enjoyed a storied career in speed skating, which earned her a spot in the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame. She's a former provincial, national and North American champion. March 17, 2014

OSHAWA -- Born into a long family line of strong and successful women in sport, Oshawa’s Eileen Richards was quite simply the best of the best in North American speed skating in her youth on the prairies.

A month removed from her 91st birthday, Richards (nee Whalley) grew up in Winnipeg, but now resides in a retirement home in Oshawa. Her mind is still as sharp as skate blades as she reminisces effortlessly about names and dates in her career, which culminated in being inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.

After following her older brother, Evans Whalley, into speed skating, she started racing competitively in 1938, winning the Winnipeg city championship in the Grade 9 relay.

“I did it just for the fun of it,” she recalls of becoming involved in speed skating, “because I liked being active.”

From there, the member of the Winnipeg Speed Skating Club went on to skate in numerous provincial, national and international events in the 1940s, piling up a quick succession of victories in Canada and the U.S. Skating on outdoor rinks, sometimes in frigid cold of a prairie winter, she competed in five races over two days of distances of 220 yards, 440, 880, 3/4 of a mile and a mile.

The longer races, she noted, were her specialty.

“I always had trouble with the 200 because I couldn’t get started fast enough. I loved the longer races because I knew how to skate them. I learned how to conserve my energy.”

Dubbed ‘Queen Eileen’ in the Winnipeg newspapers due to her winning ways in the ‘40s, she hit the apex of her skating career at the 1946 North American championships, which returned after the Second World War. There, Richards ended competitive speed skating with a bang. She won the overall senior women’s crown in Schenectady, New York in record-setting fashion, capturing the 440-yard event in 43 seconds, while also winning the mile event in a record time of 2:32.7.

Although a North American title was a big accomplishment, she noted she was most proud of winning the prestigious 10,000 Lakes international event in St. Paul, Minnesota. She won this event each year from 1943 to 1945.

She recalled there was no such thing as sponsorship in those days.

“You had to pay your own travel and expenses,” she noted, adding her father paid for her skating. “You even had to buy your own uniform in those days.”

Her storied speed skating career spanned eight years, extending only until 1946 until she retired from the sport to marry and move to the Toronto area.

“I was kind of sad when I stopped. I knew we couldn’t afford it,” she said wistfully.

Moreover, he first husband, Don Gair, didn’t want her to travel to the various competitions.

“He was old school who thought a woman’s place was in the home,” said Richards, a mother of four. “I was young and I believed him.”

Her biggest regret of retiring early was that only a year after she won the North American championship in 1946, the Olympic movement allowed female competitors for the first time. She would have been in the prime of her career.

Her biggest thrill in speed skating, however, came in 2001, when she received word she would be inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame.

“Oh my goodness, I was so surprised,” she said of her induction, recalling with pride being piped into the hall in Winnipeg.

She wasn’t the only woman in her family to be named hall of famers in Manitoba. Her aunt, Lillian Simpson, went into the Manitoba hall of fame as a builder in the sport of curling. Her sister-in-law Joan Whalley was also inducted into the hall of fame in curling as a builder.

Her cozy Oshawa apartment is filled with reminders -- framed medals and plaques -- from her heyday. The mementoes were assembled on plaques by her daughter Patti Coombs who says, growing up, there was never a lot of talk about her mother’s accomplishments in speed skating.

“She is very humble,” said Coombs, adding many of her awards and trophies were collected in boxes in the basement of their homes; many of the trophies were damaged and broken in storage. “Mom never talked about it much when we were young. In my 20s, I started to clue in to the fact that my mother was a champion and she broke many records.”